IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!
Heya folks! Did you enjoy another great week of AEW Friday Night Dynamite last week? How about Tuesday’s edition of AEW Dark? Well, hold onto your butts because we’re about to embark on another amazing wrestling journey through the AEWorld. I know it’s only been a week since we last saw each other but holy cow, it’s felt like a month since I’ve watched Dynamite. Even on the cards where I’ve been most excited, it hasn’t felt this long. Maybe I’ve just been busy and experienced a lot of things since last Friday but man, it has just felt like forever. Welp, to paraphrase – the time is up, my time is now. So let’s jump into the deep end and get to it!
BOTCH: Friday Night Fight
Oh, we’re not fucking around tonight. Okayyy. I see you, AEW. Wardlow comes out with Shawn Spears as his cornerman for a cage match against, undefeated in MMA, Jake Hager. At least Hager was wise enough to bring out old dog Chris Jericho to be in his corner. I didn’t realize Aubrey Edwards was a registered MMA official. Well, this is going to rule. We’ve got three rounds scheduled, here we go!
Round one starts off with a bunch of kitty-cat dancing and missed punches. Hager attempts a takedown but Wardlow avoids it. About a minute and a half in, we finally get our first strike landed as Hager hits a Shane McMahon jab that catches Wardlow in the face. This also gets his attention and wakes him up. After a slow Hager combo, Wardlow goes into the clinch and just tosses Hager aside like an old bag of garbage. The last minute of round one sees Wardlow connect on a superman punch and just beating up on a scurrying Hager but the bell saves Jake from any further damage.
Wardlow begins round two with a flying knee that flies and misses. He gets the mount position on Hager and starts a heavy ground and pound. By heavy, I mean slow as a molasses shit. Wardlow goes for the patented Ronda Rousey armbar but Hager counters and takes the mount position. He then gets a triangle choke locked in, which is broken up when Wardlow powerbombs him to the canvas and punches him in the face. Hager slides out into an ankle lock submission but Wardlow rolls through and hits an upkick. With the upperhand, Wardlow throws Hager at the cage buckle-bomb style and lands a *checks notes* hurricanrana (yep, in an MMA match). Hager plants Wardlow with a Urinagi into the triangle choke, to which Wardlow flips the bird and passes out. At 4 minutes and 13 seconds of the second round, Jake Hager wins by submission!
After the fight, Hager attempts to show respect to Wardlow with the tried-and-true fistbump but Spears clocks Hager from behind. Jericho evens the odds rather quickly but that dastardly MJF jumps him and rips off Jericho’s protective elbow brace. He locks in the Salt of the Earth but Dean Malenko pulls him off. Naturally, MJF knocks his ass on the ground. Sammy jumps the cage and chases The Pinnacle Bitches off.
Alright. Irishblade, why did you give this “match” a Botch when it was awesome? First off, stop. It wasn’t awesome. Knowing full well it was going to be a soft MMA fight but they made a farce out of it. Too often did it look like they weren’t really hitting each other and took the viewer (in this case, me!) out of the believability. Plus, hitting a hurricanrana shattered the suspension of disbelief. Now that I’m done bitching about that, I can see people enjoying it. I didn’t outwardly hate it. It was just closer to a farce than an actual MMA fight. MJF punching Malenko is awesome. Look, if a man in his early 60s with Parkinson’s jumps into a fracas in the middle of an MMA ring, he’s bound to catch some of the action. I hold no ill will toward MJF here. What say you, SRP folks? Was MJF wrong to punch the guy pulling him off his bitter, sworn enemy? Let us know in the comments below!
POP: Two on One Fun
These two fine gentlemen come out for a little two-on-one handicap match against the thorn in their side, Darby Allin. Darby starts off fast as hell as he is wont to do. He pulls out some innovative offense to neutralize the “damned” numbers game, including a springboard Coffin Drop missile that takes both of them down. Ethan Page takes advantage of Darby and throws him into the turnbuckle like a sack of potatoes and then proceeds to pick him apart all over the ring. Scorpio Sky begs in to get a piece of the beatdown. He gives Allin a violent backbreaker and immediately tags Page back in.
Allin tries for a surprise rollup but only gets a two count. Page is pissed and throws a knee to Allin’s ribs. As he goes for another backbreaker, Darby reverses it into the Scorpion Death Drop. Scorpio tags in and stalks his prey. Darby pretends to tag himself in for the hot tag and immediately takes advantage, including a Canadian Destroyer on Scorpio. He is able to secretly zip tie Ethan Page’s feet together and hits Sky with a floatover stunner. Darby follows it up with the Coffin Drop on Scorpio but Page reaches in and breaks up the pinfall then cuts himself loose from the zip tie. He throws Darby face first at the (Steel)RingPost and rolls him back in the ring. After a brief comeback by Darby, Page hits the Ego’s Edge on him and gets the three count.
I came away from this match feeling pretty meh. Two much larger guys beat up a much smaller guy in a handicap match. I mean, that’s exactly what SHOULD happen in a two-on-one especially when one is a tag team (albeit briefly) and one is a single’s star. It gets a Pop though because for any shortcomings the match itself had, Darby Allin throwing himself around with the right guys will always pop a crowd, even if it’s an audience of one sitting on his couch.
POP: Why Wingmen Can’t Be Your Best Friends
The Wingmen, most notably Cezar Bononi, get the jobber entrance for Bononi’s match against Orange Cassidy, who smartly brings out his Best Friends and the Alien Girl. Clearly, he watched the numbers game catch up to Darby Allin during the last match. The Wingmen promised to make Orange Cassidy pretty and they lived up to that. Every time Bononi throws Cassidy to the outside, The Wingmen are there to spray him with tanner, gel his hair and Zolph Diggler even throws his shiny jacket on OC! Cassidy actually wrestles with it for awhile until the Best Friends get tired of The Wingmen’s act. While Statlander distracts Rick Knox, Trent and Chuck launch OC over the top rope onto The Wingmen. One quick Orange Punch later, and we have a winner!
This match was fun. It wasn’t a technical classic by any means but it was fast-paced and shows the importance of telling a good story. It was just a little pre-match vignette that told us The Wingmen were going to make Orange Cassidy pretty. That’s all it took. So I’m Popping this one because it capitalized on what it said it would. Pro wrestling 101, y’all!
POP: Enforcerito
It’s time! Brock Anderson’s highly anticipated debut! Okay, to be fair, not a lot of people are talking about it but here we are! New Dad Cody Rhodes joins Brock for his first match against QT Marshall and Aaron Solow. Brock starts the match early and takes control of Solow. QT gets tagged in and immediately, Brock also gets the advantage over him. Once Brock tags in Cody, though, QT hustles ass over to his corner and gets Solow back in the ring. Cody pops Solow in the mouth and hits a Tope’ Suicida on QT on the outside. Marshall and Solow take control and double-team Cody. Cody reverses a belly to back suplex and tags Brock.
Brock shoots Marshall into the corner and gives him 10 shoulder blocks to the ribs in impressive fashion. Brock gets sidetracked by Solow, which is just enough time to allow QT to hit a Double-A spinebuster on Brock. QT glares at Arn, who calls Marshall a son of a bitch. QT and Solow beat on Brock during an entire commercial break. QT chops Brock like his Uncle Ric and Brock tries to tag in Cody. The dumb ref misses the tag and QT goes for a CrossRhodes, which Brock reverses into a DDT and gets a hot tag on Cody.
Cody comes in like gangbusters and demolishes Marshall and Solow. He knocks QT out of the ring and then locks in a figure four on Solow, who immediately grabs the ropes to break the maneuver. Brock gets tagged in and irish whips Cody toward the turnbuckle. Cody knocks QT out of the arena with a kick from the top so Brock flips over Solow for the jackknife pin and a win! UN-DE-FEATED! UN-DE-FEATED!
I feel weird Popping a Cody Rhodes match but let’s be honest, the focus was mainly on Brock Anderson and his debut. The kid looked good, too! Cody was on the apron for most of the match so that’s probably why I enjoyed it haha. I’m just kidding. I give Cody a ton of grief about his generic matches but when he’s assisting in putting over a new superstar or telling a story in the ring, there’s nobody better than Cody Rhodes for that. I’m interested to see if Brock has any charisma or mic talent but we’ll get to that in due time. High five, Brock!
POP: Miro, Miro on the Wall, Who’s the One to Save Them All?
Much like the AEW website not having any footage of this match, Penelope Ford comes out not having any Kip Sabian for this match. Poor girl. Anyway, The Hollywood Blondes come out with Julia Hart and we have blonde-on-blonde hate crime. The girls start out with perfectly cromulent chain wrestling. Julia Hart hits a dropkick (!) and a cross body and Penelope slides to the outside. She’s able to trip up Julia and get the advantage and drop the knees onto Hart out on the apron. Penelope hits a vicious gutbuster but misses the moonsault to follow up! Hart goes for the splits-legdrop but Penelope moved and locks in an Indian Deathlock. Hart taps and Penelope returns in style!
After the match, Penelope doesn’t let go so the Hollywood Blondes jump in the ring to get her to break it up. They check on Julia while Penelope celebrates. Oh but wait! Miro comes out and asks Penelope where Kip is. He says she’s alone and outnumbered three to one, which isn’t fair. Miro clubs Garrison and throws him out. Pillman hits him with a flying forearm and they brawl around the ring until the refs can get in there. Unfortunately, there’s only five refs so Miro easily breaks free and tackles Pillman. We cut away while they’re still brawling so I assume they’re just going to fight all the way up until we see them again.
This was fun. Shoutout to Julia Hart for hitting a dropkick. I don’t know if offenses have evolved tremendously but when I saw her dropkick, it felt new. It was a weird feeling so props to her for getting up on the dropkick. Penelope looked really good. Her facial expressions while Julia and the Blondes made their way into the ring. It was fantastic. I’d like to see her get a little run and this is definitely a start. Her personality is definitely different when she’s not around Sabian. As for Miro popping in to defend her, I love it. Are we going some sort of Stockholm Syndrome to get Penelope and Kip broken up? Is this a way to bring CJ Perry into the fold? I don’t know where it’s headed but I’m intrigued to find out and that’s my favorite thing. Also, Miro is on a collision course with Brian Pillman, Jr. Sorry, Brian.
POP: Spraynanigans
Our main event this week is set to be a barn burner with Penta Zero Miedo (lookin’ all sorts of fly in his Joker-themed attire), The Elite Hunter, Frankie Kazarian and my boy, the Mad King Eddie Kingston taking on Black-haired Buck and Gallows & Anderson. Kazarian, of course, goes right after Anderson. He smashes his face into Eddie and Penta’s boots then tags in Penta. Anderson and Buck try to double-team Penta but he slings their blades and tags in Eddie.
Eddie throws him all around the ring so buck tags in Gallows. We get a bit of a hoss showdown with shoulder slams but Kingston jumps off the ropes to shoulder block Gallows to the ground. The action spills to the outside and everyone is hitting everyone. Buck hits Kingston with a flying tackle and punches, which tires Buck out. Brandon Cutler sprays him down to cool him off. Penta chops Anderson and they all continue fighting on the outside rfor more than half of the commercial break. Apparently, we don’t have any countouts today.
Kingston and Buck are in the ring when we come back and Buck gets the advantage. Eddie is able to make the tag to Kazarian who just demolishes Anderson as he enters the match. Frankie knocks the other two off the apron and locks in the crossface chicken wing. Gallows comes in and breaks it up much to the chagrin of the audience. This distraction allows Anderson to hit a huge spinebuster on Frankie. Anderson tags Buck and Miedo gets the tag on the other side. Miedo hits a spinning backbreaker and knocks Gallows off the apron. He then hits Gallows and Anderson with a flying senton to the outside.
Kingston gets the tag and all three of them run a triple team offense onto Buck in the corner. Penta hits the Fear Factor into an Eddie backdrop driver and Kazarian tops it off with a double-underhook facebuster. Eddie pins Buck but Gallows again breaks it up at two and carries Buck to his corner so Anderson can tag in.
Penta also tags in and instantly gets control. He kicks Anderson in the mouth but can’t get a three count. Buck hits a flying elbow drop on Penta but he kicks out at two when Gallows attempts the pin. Gallows tags Anderson back in for a Magic Killer but Kazarian wasn’t liking that idea. He eats a superkick from Black-haired Buck, who immediately gets destroyed by Eddie Kingston. Penta goes up top to finish off Anderson but Blonde-haired Buck shows up and sprays Penta in the face. Not even two masks can prevent that. Anderson hits a supercutter for the three count and The Elite celebrate.
Good wrestling is just a pleasure to watch. Also, Penta’s Joker gear was amazing. I wish this match could have went longer and not ended with shenanigans but once Don Callis was hyping up the absence of Nick Jackson, it was obvious how this was going to end. Regardless of the foreshadowing, it was a great wrestling match and very enjoyable. Looks like we’re moving Dynamite to Saturday next week, so change your DVR accordingly!
That wraps up another special Friday Night Dynamite! Enjoy your week everyone! Feel free to leave a comment below (good or bad, I’ll answer them all!) and share the column with your friends, family and followers. And seriously, join the Discord for good talk with good people. You can find me on there, Instagram or Twitter (all are @robbywardshow). Please hit me up with what you liked, what you hated, what you think I can change. I’m all ears! Wrestling united!
